Abstract
To establish the most appropriate methods and interval for periodic examination for detecting breast cancer in an early state in women visiting an outpatient clinic, 58 breast cancer patients at Saitama Cancer Center having a screening history in the last 2 years were investigated. A total of 33 patients (56.9%) were diagnosed as having early breast cancer. The rate of diagnostic accuracy in these patients was 55.2% by clinical palpation, 67.4% by mammography (MG) and 83.3% by ultrasonography (US), respectively. Because of the difficulty in obtaining an accurate diagnosis at an early state, preoperative biopsy of breast tumors was done in a high proportion of patients. On the other hand, we evaluated the rate of detection of malignant changes for each diagnostic method (MG and US) from the patients examined by the same methods. In the findings of MG, 61.9% (within a one-year interval) and 90.9% (within a 2-year interval) of cases revealed malignant changes, and 50.0% (within a one-year interval) and 100% (within 2-year interval) of cases showed malignant findings by US. On the basis of these results, we consider that annual screening using MG as well as US in addition to physical palpation might be valuable for obtaining early detection of breast cancer by periodic examination.
